Chelle𓆏

“I look at my skin and it is glowing with constellations of ancestors. I ask them about escape and freedom and listen for revelation.”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“What is it like to be an astronaut of incarceration? It’s stomped wings and a choked heart. The sound of my mom’s screams in that Pennsylvania courtroom made me deaf, like I was actually being pushed beyond and into the stratosphere. She swallowed all of sound into her pain. I saw my dad poured out of himself, shriveled, his breath hijacked, trying to be a pillar to my mom, as he crumpled.”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“The Blackness between the stars is the melanin in your skin,”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“And I'll never go asleep again believing that touching them or anything of his will lead to an arm around my neck.

But it feels like an arm around my neck, wrenching, just thinking about how I'll never go to sleep again believing him or believing he will eventually come home, because he won't, and now I guess I should love him more, like he's my favorite, which is hard to do because he was my only brother, and already my favorite.”
― Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down